Spiced Chicken

Could also be called "Diet chicken" - at least I use it as part of my diet, but the rest of my family seem to like it as well.

Ingredients
2 servings

• 1 chicken breast, skin removed, cut in two pieces
  
• 1 tablespoonful of oil (olive oil preferable)
  
• 1-2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar
  
• 1 tablespoonful of fresh ginger (1 teaspoonful dried)
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 teaspoonful ground (or just crushed) mustard seeds
• 1 teaspoonful dried paprika (not hot)
• half a small hot pepper (chili or other) - optional
• salt and pepper to taste
  

Preparation

Put all ingredients, except for the chicken, in a small pot over a low fire, until heated and steaming. Add the chicken and stir to coat with the mixture. Cover and let cook over low heat (barely boiling), until the meat is tender (about 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the chicken's age and exercise, more for free range chicken) and the garlic can be crashed with the back of a spoon. Stir once or twice and watch that it does not dry completely. If it does, add a little water and lower the heat.
The meat should be left with some dark colored gravy.
Serve with whatever you like: salad for a strict diet, else rice or potatoes.

Lemon Ice

As I bake slowly from one of the summer heat waves in Athens, I dream of Spain and a refreshing ice I used to eat there. I think it was called "limon granizzato" (my Spanish spelling might be off) and I don't know how it was made. This is my attempt to recreate the memory ...

Ingredients
4 servings

• 2 lemons
• 1/3 cup of icing sugar
• 2 cups of ice

Utensil note
You will need some sort of utensil to crush the ice: either an ice crusher, or a stainless steel blender or a pestle and mortar.

Preparation

Grate thinly the lemon peel from half of one lemon (the yellow part only, not the white one which is bitter). Squeeze the juice of the lemons.
Crush the ice and mix with the rind, juice and sugar.
The result should have a slushy consistency and a pale yellow color.
Eat immediately, either with a spoon from a bowl, or with a straw from a glass. Small sips, if you don't want your insides to freeze ...
It keeps in the freezing compartment of your refrigerator, but tends to harden over time.
You can freeze in an ice tray to make some very refreshing ice-cubes.
Notes
I use icing sugar, because it is very hard - if not impossible, to dissolve regular sugar in lemon juice and I hate finding all the sugar bits in my ice.
Just for the record, I have broken a blender the third time I tried to crush ice. (for some reason, it had no problem the two first times).
You can use more or less sugar, according to your taste, and more or less ice, depending on how strong you want it to taste.

Eggs in milk

I recently had a jaw operation, which was good for me, since it requires eating pureed food for some time. I needed a diet, anyway :-)
So, the first recipe will be soft ...
It is one of my childrens' favorites, both when they were small and even now.
Ingredients
(per person)

• 2 eggs
• half a cup of milk
• a small piece of butter, about the size of a hazelnut (margarine will do)
• salt and pepper
• 2 slices of toast or small rusk
  

Preparation
Put the milk in a pan - the smallest that you have. If it is not small enough for the milk to at least cover one egg, add more milk. You will not have this problem, if you cook for many.
Heat the milk, until steaming and quite hot to the touch, but not boiling in any way.
Lower with a small plate, one egg at a time, into the hot milk and let it cook, until it has lost its transparency outside (or longer, if you want your eggs harder).
Arrange the toast slices on a plate. Put one cooked egg on each slice, add the butter and enough milk for the toast to absorb. After the toast has absorbed the milk (a few minutes later), the food should look relatively dry, not like soup!
Salt and pepper to taste. Eat with a spoon.
The milk must not boil - ever - and the egg yolk must not break (the freshness of the egg helps), or the egg's shape will be ruined. It will still be eatable though.
Notes
This is a different way of making poached eggs, that taste better than the traditional ones.

Introduction

With 4 children (mostly grown up now), a full-time job, a mixed cooking heritage from my parents and a health education, I had to find a way to adapt the recipes I knew and loved and to "invent" some new ones.
My father was from mainland Greece: Fokida in Roumeli, where the most treasured food is meat, although in the old times it was only eaten on holidays, like Christmas, Easter and weddings. So, in the ancient Greek heritage, their main food was bread, cheese and eggs (these combine nicely into their wonderful pies). My mother was from 40 Ekklissies (40 churches, Kirk Kilissi today) in eastern Thrace, which now belongs to Turkey, where food includes raisins and pine nuts with main meals (even chicken in desserts) and many spices and is rather unusual in Greece. Both mainland and oriental Greek cuisine can be too oily at times and I hated this, so I started adding less fat.
Then my children, growing up, became fans of fast food and I had to find a way to cook something that looked like fast food, but was healthier.
Since I enjoyed cooking, even though often I did this late at night for the next day, I started buying recipe books, with a special fascination for the food of other countries, adapting the recipes, when the ingredients were not available.
This way, I have collected (in my mind) a lot of recipes, so I thought it was time to put them on paper - or the web rather.